Monday, June 7, 2010

I propose a new reality show twist to Sunday shows. Fact-checking all around. 3 major errors and you get voted off all Sunday shows.

I have a better idea for how to deal with the Sunday shows. Instead of trying to fix something no one should care about, I recommend sleeping in, or reading an extra section of the Sunday NYT that you don't usually get to, or going to church if you do that sort of thing, or watching football (in season only), or mowing the lawn, or mastering the 7x7 KenKen, or doing some errands, or baking, or getting out your mitt and having a catch, or cleaning something you normally put off, or catching up on that show you keep intending to watch and haven't got to (give Dollhouse another try, if you quit after five episodes), or a big 'ole game of monopoly with the whole family, or calling your parents/cousins/friends, or, I don't know, watching infomercials.

I've said this before: Just ignore the Sunday shows. If they ever mattered, and if they matter now, it's because of communication between elites (that is, trial balloons and the like), not because sometimes whoever is spinning jumps the line between spin and outright lies. No one is watching. OK, not no one -- but it's a tiny group of people, and almost all of them are intense political junkies and therefore the most likely people to have strong partisan views that aren't going to change because someone on MTP says something that's not actually true.

If you want to fix something in the press, figure out some way that local reporting can produce revenues, or how to push reporters to pay more attention to policy. The Sunday shows? Feh. Really -- given the limited resources of fact-checkers, I think I'd rather they devote their time to something that a lot more people watch, ads or presidential speeches or whatever. And all the smart people thinking about trying to fix the Sunday shows could turn that brainpower to something more important, like why Dish Network doesn't carry C-SPAN 3.